Pastoralism under Stress: Resources, Institutions and Poverty among the Borana Oromo in Southern Ethiopia
Boku Tache
PhD Thesis
Environment and Development Studies
Department of International Environment and Development Studies,
Norwegian University of Life Sciences Ås, Norway
Thesis Number: 2008: 33 ISSN: 1503-1667
ISBN: 978-82-575-0836-4
DEDICATION
I dedicate this thesis to the memories of my sister, Jilo Dida Guyo; my father-in-law, Jarso Effo; and Boru Madha, the Abbaa Gada of Borana Oromo (1992 - 2000).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... iv
ABSTRACT... vii
LIST OF FIGURES ... viii
LIST OF PAPERS ... ix
1. INTRODUCTION ... 1
1.1 Problem Specification and Objectives... 1
1.2 Objectives of the Thesis... 3
2. POVERTY AND PASTORALISM –A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE... 4
2.1 Perspectives on Poverty ... 4
2.1.1 Conceptions, Causes and Measures... 4
2.1.2 .Conceptions of Poverty... 5
2.1.3 Causes of Poverty... 10
2.2 Poverty, Environment and Pastoralism... 13
2.2.1 Poverty-Environment Linkages... 13
2.2.2 Poverty and the Pastoral Context... 14
2.2.3 Pastoralists and Land Tenure... 16
2.2.4 Household Responses to Poverty... 18
2.2.5 Institutions for Poverty Alleviation... 20
3. SYNTHESIS... 24
3.1 Study Area ... 24
3.2 Methods... 25
3.2.1 Participant Observation... 25
3.2.2 Household Survey... 27
3.2.3 Key Informant Interviews... 28
3.2.4 Stakeholder Workshop... 29
3.3 Understanding Poverty in Borana Pastoralism ... 30
3.4 Summary of Main Findings and Policy Implications ... 33
REFERENCES ... 38
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many organizations and individuals have contributed to bringing to fruition of this study.
I express my gratitude to all of them. Foremost, I owe my intellectual debt to my supervisor, Dr Espen Sjaastad for his meticulous professionalism in supervising me and for the insightful theoretical and methodological guidance, follow up and prompt comments that I unvaryingly received through out my study years. His consistency and constructive criticisms have been invaluable assets for me in bringing this study to completion. Professor Gufu Oba indefatigably supported me from the very inception of the project idea. I am grateful to him for the stimulating discussions, follow up and incisive comments I received through out my study years. The Norwegian Research Council (NFR) is duly thanked for funding the study via NFR project number 161359/S30; I thank the project leader, Professor Gufu Oba, for the scholarship.
Noragric, the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, offered me an ideal working environment. I am solemnly thankful to the Head of the Department, Professor Ruth Haug, and all Management, Scientific and Administrative staffs for their immeasurable help through out my stay in the Department. I thank Dr Randi Kaarhus, Dr Gunnvor Berg and all members of Rights, Conflicts and Resources Group, for valuable comments during the early phase of my study. I acknowledge with much gratitude the enriching comments I received from Professor Leif Manger (University of Bergen) and Dr Marco Bassi (University of Oxford). I thank Professor Nadarajah Shanmugaratnam, Professor Ian Bryceson and Dr Tor Arve Benjaminsen for stimulating discussions on different occasions. My sincere acknowledgment is due to Liv Ellingsen and Ingeborg Brandtzæg, for the untiring library services. I recognize with many credits all the extra efforts they made to satisfy my literature needs. I thank Jossie Teurlings, Frode Sundnes, Kjersti Thorkildsen, Aslaug Gotehus, Sidsel Gulbrandsen, Anne Kiøsterud, Peter Nielsen, Joanna Boddens-Hosang, Torunn Lindstad, Per Stokstad and Mads Nordahl, for support with administrative matters. I thank Lars Øimoen, Anne- Marthe Leinebø and Anders Dysvik, for IT-related supports.
In Ethiopia, my gratitude is due to the Administrative Office of Borana Zone for granting me research permission, and to Administrative Offices of Yaballo District and Dirre
District, for facilitating my fieldwork. I am indebted to the former Southern Rangelands Development Unit of Oromia Pastoral Development Commission for logistics support and meteorological data; Dalu Ibrahim, the ex- Manager, Gayo Guyo, the former Head of Administration and Finance, Million Sebsebe and Gela Taddese are all duly thanked. I am also indebted to all the staff members of the Repair Section for regular mechanical supports with the field vehicle. In particular, I am grateful to Melaku Leggese, Berhanu Legesse, Tesfaye Lante, Solomon Assefa, Mesfin Melkamu and Butte Guyyo. Tesfaye Belay, Solomon Mindaye and Dejene Tefera provided me driving services at different times; I thank them all.
I have enormously benefited from the deep knowledge reservoirs of Borana Oromo communities and my key informants, who are too many to enumerate, for having preserved in themselves this elaborate heritage. In particular, I owe an earnest vote of thanks to Borbor Bule, Gollisa Roba, Gosa Wario, Tadhole Liban, Arboro Liban, Dullacha Halake, Madhacho Hadadi, Roba Watticha, Duba Guyo, Konsicha Buke and Qampharre Godana. I must thank heads and members of those sampled families for sharing their invaluable life experiences with me and my field assistants during the tedious interview sessions. Also, my host families deserve a special vote of gratitude. In particular, the families of Dimata Jirmo, Boru Golliso, Tuke Halake and Doyyo Dullacha from Dida Hara; the families of Tache Dida Godana, Guyo Halake, Godana Halake, Jarso Wario from Harweyyu; the families of Wario Anna, Abdi Gurracha and Tara Guyo from Dubuluq; the family of Jatani Guyyo Boyya from Harallo; I thank them all for accommodation and generosity.
My heartfelt appreciation is also due to friends and colleagues for their kind support and solidarity during the road accident in which I was involved while on duty. I thank Galgalo Dida, Galgalo Gurracha, Jarso Boru, Dullacha Agal, Abdi Gurracha, Shure Guyo, Abdullah Dima, the late Haji Guyo Fayo, Jaldessa Sora, Jatani Sora Liban, Jaldessa Tache, Dida Boru, Wario Dhaddacha, Dida Waqo, Endale Worqu, Huqa Garse, Godana Arero, Hussein Miyo, Tadhi Liban, Jatani Mudda, Dr Abba Kano Karrayu, Sora Adi, Sara Jirmo Waakala Haphana, Abba Teke Liban, Halake Dida, Godana Elema, Galma Duba, Amina Arero, Tiya Miyo, and everybody else whose name I might have
forgotten to mention, and my sincere apologies for that. I also thank the Italian lady from LVIA Office in Moyale, whose name I did not know, and her colleagues, for giving me first aid at the accident site, and the Harweyyu community in the vicinity of Tullu Nyenca, for their kind care. I also thank Halake Katelo, the famous traditional bone setter from Dhaddim, Dr Tilahun Metta and Qalla Bonaya (in Moyale, Kenya), for the medical treatments I received from them.
Wario Qancora, Guyo Qancora, Roba Waqo, Monica Jilo Bonaya, Mohamed Ibrahim and Godana Wario are cordially thanked for help with data collection, and Bertha Shilunga for diligent data entry. At Ås, I thank my friends Hassan Guyo Roba, Halima Ibrahim, Mohamed A. Guyo, Zeinabu Khalif, Tari Doti, Hussein Wario, Wario Tadhicha, Bulle Hallo, Safo Roba, Hussein Jemma, Waqtole Tiki, Itana Debela, Ajebu Nurfeta, Gutu Olana, Caltu Dula, Adane Tufa, Ayana Angassa, Ayele Tessema, Worku Tessema, Kanagasingam Umashankar, David Mwesigye Tumusiime and Weston Mwase for their friendship and stimulating academic discussions. I am particularly indebted to my friend Hassan Guyo Roba, for tireless help with statistical data analysis and motivating academic discussions. Mohamed A. Guyo, Zeinabu Khalif, Hassan Guyo Roba, Halima Ibrahim, Adi Mohamed, Hussein Jemma - thank you for the unforgettable companion and all-rounded support. I thank Ayana Angassa for the base map of the study area.
I sincerely thank Mr Tadhi Liban for his enthusiasm and encouragement. I owe a lot to my wonderful parents for their love, and I recognize with respect, the pains they went through in raising me; my brothers, sisters and relatives for their support, one way or another. Finally, I thank my family for their love, patience, understanding and moral support. My wife, Genet Jarso, deserves a special vote of thanks for her contribution towards realization of this study. She gave me consistent moral support; manifestly endured the pain of separation; diligently handled family matters, including raising of our little daughters, Gubaala and Gumi; and our nephews and nieces Jatani, Waqo, Elema
and Darmi, single-handedly; and handling of extended family matters in my absence.
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines pastoral production and poverty in Borana in southern Ethiopia. The main objective of the study is to understand the manner in which external factors, such as government policy and the natural environment affect the pastoral resource base, how this in turn influences poverty and wealth, and how customary institutions respond to these influences. Furthermore, inconsistencies between government and local perspectives are interpreted with respect to differing views about development and integration, and associated conceptions of what poverty means. The study was conducted in four localities that each reflects different livelihood options and strategies.
The study employed participant observation, a household survey, key informant interviews, case studies, and discussions during an organized workshop. The household surveys covered 330 randomly selected households from four sites in the Yaballo and Dirre districts.
Persistent and increasing poverty in Borana is attributed to impacts of state land use policies over different historical periods; incompatible conceptions of poverty and differently envisaged alleviation strategies by development planners and pastoralists;
decline in the rangelands, and associated livestock loss; internalization of these problems in a manner that aggravates vulnerability to poverty; and a decline in the capacity of the customary institutions to address poverty. Poverty drivers have different household impacts. While some households lose capacity to attain food security and self-reliance and thus drift into chronic poverty, others respond by diversifying livelihoods and herds.
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Location of the Borana Zone in Ethiopia x Figure 2. Specific Study Sites within the Borana Zone xi
Figure 3. Sustainable livelihoods framework 30 Figure. 4 A simple framework for understanding poverty in Borana pastoralism 32
LIST OF PAPERS
This thesis is based on the following submitted papers:
Paper I. Boku Tache and Gufu Oba. “Land Use Policies, History and Inter-ethnic Conflicts in Southern Ethiopia.” Forthcoming in the Review of African Political Economy.
Paper II. Boku Tache and Gufu Oba. “Linkages between Land Use Changes, Drought Impacts and Pastoralists’ Livelihood Responses in Borana, Southern Ethiopia.”
Submitted to the International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology.
Paper III. Boku Tache and Espen Sjaastad. “Pastoral Conceptions of Poverty: An Analysis of Traditional and Conventional Indicators from Borana, Ethiopia.”
Submitted to World Development.
Paper IV. Boku Tache and Espen Sjaastad. “Mutual Assistance and Poverty Reduction among the Borana Oromo: The Institution of Buusaa Gonofaa.” Submitted to Development and Change.
Figure 1. Location of the Borana Zone in Ethiopia
Figure 2. Specific Study Sites within the Borana Zone
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Problem Specification and Objectives
Pastoral livelihoods are characterized by risk and uncertainty due to fluctuating environmental conditions and occasional shocks (Scoones, 1995). Traditionally, the vagaries of the natural environment are overcome through access to and management of communal rangelands, mobility of stock, and institutions for mutual assistance. However, high stock mortality during droughts is often seen as a symptom of inherent flaws in livestock production systems; barren rangelands are taken as evidence of unsustainable grazing pressure and increasing land degradation (Hardin, 1968). Moreover, the very features that allow pastoral production systems to work – the communal land tenure and the free mobility – are often viewed as impediments to commercialization of land use, social integration, and, in a broad sense, the modernization and civilization of pastoral culture (Scott, 1998; Bonfiglioli, 1992; Baxter, 1985).
Application of the concept of poverty in agrarian systems must be distinguished from its application to the pastoral context. In agrarian systems, the concept is built primarily around “access to agricultural land” (e.g. Khan, 2000:4). Plot size and yield are measured to see if the harvest can support the household, and the capacity to buy agricultural inputs, along with the possession of oxen, are further indicators of household wealth or poverty. Such indicators are poorly attuned to the pastoral context. As a consequence, the rural poverty discourse has tended to either misdiagnose pastoral poverty or neglect it entirely.
Pastoral production in Borana depends on the availability of range resources and traditional wells that are managed and utilized according to seasonal variability and rules that regulate access (Bassi and Tache, 2008). Elders in mixed-clan localities manage pasture, whereas the management of water wells is the responsibility of the particular clans that own them (Helland, 1977). In the past, Borana pastoralism was recognized as being one of the most successful production systems in the arid lands of Eastern Africa, the success being rooted in the system’s ability to adapt to changes in the pasture resources and the existence of robust management institutions (Cossins, 1988; Cossins
and Upton, 1988). However, recent studies have reported a decline in the pastoral resource base and a gradual weakening of customary institutions (Bassi, 1997; Oba, 1998; Tache, 2000; Helland, 1998; Kamara, 2001).
The root cause of the institutional disempowerment lies in the historical processes of state formation in Ethiopia that culminated in the conquest of the area by the Abyssinians from the north, around the close of the 19th century, and the subsequent imposition of state institutions. Development intervention in the Borana rangelands dates back to the 1960s, with livestock development projects that emphasized increased off-take and physical infrastructure to link the lowlands with markets in the highlands (Coppock, 1994). Such initiatives launched livestock holding grounds that later evolved into state ranches along the Yaballo-Moyale road (Fig. 2), as a precursor to exclusive land use in the rangelands.
Today, crop cultivation is fast expanding in the rangelands and resource tenure is moving towards de facto individualization by pastoralists and private investors (Tache, 2000;
Oba, 1998).
In this changing natural and social environment, how is poverty conceptualized, caused, and mitigated? What are the policy implications of the divided interpretations of pastoral land use and culture? This thesis considers poverty within the context of pastoral production in Borana, raising the following research questions:
• What is poverty? How do the Borana pastoralists perceive and determine poverty?
Are the conventional poverty approaches and indices appropriate for poverty diagnosis in the pastoral context?
• What are the major causes of poverty in Borana? What were the major policies and historical processes that affected pastoral production in the Borana rangelands?
• What are the impacts of multiple droughts on the pastoral economy in Borana and what were the major livelihood response strategies?
• What institutions of mutual assistance exist in Borana? How are they organized?
What roles have they traditionally played in poverty reduction? What are the prospects for mutual assistance in a changing society?
Providing answers to these questions is important for several reasons. The application of inappropriate conceptions and measures of poverty will lead to its misdiagnosis, both in terms of who the poor are and how poor they are; misdiagnosis of poverty will in turn lead to flawed targeting for development and relief, and ineffective alleviation measures;
an incomplete understanding of poverty may fail to utilize, and may even marginalize, local institutions that may be crucial in its alleviation. On a broader level, flawed targeting and inappropriate measures may be counterproductive and eventually undermine the environment and the culture on which pastoral livelihoods depend. A critical examination of poverty – its causes, its manifestation, and its alleviation – in a pastoral context is thus crucial from perspectives related to indigenous rights, sustainable land use, and the achievement of international poverty reduction targets.
1.2 Objectives of the Thesis
The main objective of this study is to understand the manner in which external factors such as government policy and the natural environment affect the pastoral resource base, how these in turn influence poverty and wealth, and how customary institutions respond to these influences.
Specific objectives are:
I: to explore the role of state land use policies and pastoral conflicts in inducing resource base shrinkage in southern rangelands.
II: to assess links between land use changes, drought impacts and household livelihood responses in Borana.
III: to explore and compare conceptions of poverty and their implications for poverty diagnosis and poverty reduction.
IV: to identify social institutions of mutual assistance among the Borana Oromo, explore their roles and evaluate their performances in poverty reduction.
2. POVERTY AND PASTORALISM –A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 2.1 Perspectives on Poverty
2.1.1 Conceptions, Causes and Measures
Poverty is complex in its conception, causation, manifestation, diagnosis, and in the policies devised and implemented in pursuit of its reduction (Chambers, 1983; Escobar, 1995; Kakwani and Silber, 2007; Maxwell, 1999; Sen, 1981; Townsend, 1971).
Complexity can be discerned from what Maxwell (1999) calls the “fault lines” of the debate: the aspects that separate different interpretative approaches adopted in advancing the conceptualization and measurement of poverty. The relevant dichotomies include:
individual or household measures; private consumption only or private consumption plus publicly provided goods; monetary only, or monetary plus non-monetary components;
snapshot or timeline; actual or potential poverty; stock or flow measures; input or output measures; absolute or relative poverty; objective or subjective preconceptions of poverty (p. 4). Researchers’ epistemological orientations and current ontological, economic and ecological conditions also influence the interpretation of poverty.
A number of theoretical perspectives are evident in current poverty discourses. For the purpose of this thesis, a perspective on poverty, first of all, defines a particular conception of what poverty is: what it means to be poor. This definition will then have implications for how poverty can be gauged or measured; it can indeed be argued that measurement in some cases has informed the definition rather than the other way round. But within the conception and accepted metrics of poverty, lie implicit or explicit associations with regard to the causes of poverty and the methods through which it can be addressed.
Although the concept of poverty is frequently treated as being unambiguous, and the statistics and statements surrounding it are often served up as objective and indisputable facts, concept and measurement can never be entirely separated from cause and cure. This is plain to see in very broad definitions of poverty, where the line between concept and cause is sometimes blurred to the vanishing point; but this is true of all approaches, as
will be discussed later. A perspective on poverty, then, embraces not only a particular conception and a method of diagnosis but also, to a greater or lesser extent, an explanation of its policy derivatives.
A further issue to be considered is that of context. A perspective on poverty is not formed in a vacuum. The earliest studies of poverty focused on English cities. The perspective generated through such studies might have turned out to be very different if the focus had instead been on rural African communities. And the conception of poverty appropriate to a 19th century Londoner might be very different from that appropriate to a 21st century pastoralist in Ethiopia, with the difference having important implications also for an analysis of causes and cures.
In the following sections, I first outline different perspectives on poverty and their associated conceptions and causal explanations. I then briefly review poverty and environment linkages more generally, before focusing specifically on poverty and natural resources in the pastoral context.
2.1.2 .Conceptions of Poverty
International financial institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and several UN agencies have advanced poverty conceptions with an emphasis on income, expenditure, and consumption; here collectively termed “the income approach”.1 For example, in the 1960s the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) interpreted poverty as a failure to match income and consumption (St Clair, 2003). While there has recently been a shift in the UN in terms of perceptions aligned more with comprehensive development and the advancement of human rights (UNDP, 1998; UNICEF, 2000), the World Bank and IMF approaches to poverty reduction are still informed largely by an income poverty conception, measured in its crudest form as the number of people living on less than a dollar a day.
1 While income measures and expenditure measures are not the same, they share an emphasis on household monetary budgets. Consumption measures, on the other hand, capture some non-monetary aspects of household well-being, but neglect savings and other aspects of potential well-being.
The enduring popularity of the income approach to poverty can be explained by the origination of the body of poverty research itself. Poverty research originated in the urban context of a western society with Charles Booth’s study in London in the late nineteenth century, followed by Rowntree’s similar research conducted in York city (see Fried and Elman, 1969). These studies marked the beginning of scientific research on poverty and the views of such researchers had a profound influence on subsequent thinking on poverty. For one thing, the studies not only shared a common urban focus in terms of the research setting, but they also advanced the conceptualization of poverty in purely economic terms. These studies also suggested definitions of poverty and the poor.
Rowntree (1910: 133) defined the poor as those families whose income was insufficient for obtaining the basic necessities. Booth also developed designations of the poor by classifying them into two categories: the “poor” and the “very poor”. He defined the poor as those “living under a struggle to obtain the necessaries of life”, while the very poor are those who “live in a state of chronic want” (Fried and Elman, 1969:55).
The tradition of conceptualizing poverty as income deprivation is still pervasive, and also occurs outside multilateral organizations. For example, Lipton (1988:4) adopts a similar approach by classifying the poor into two categories on the basis of the proportion of their total income spent on satisfaction of basic needs, food in particular. Accordingly, those spending up to 70 per cent of their income on food items are categorized as “the poor” whereas those who spend 80 per cent or more on food are said to be “the ultra poor”. This proposition assumes that the amount of income spent on basic needs indicates the economic status of a household. Thus the higher the proportion of income a household spends on the basic necessities, the poorer is the household, as it is constantly confronted with a greater effort to obtain the basic necessities to ensure survival. In such a scenario, options for saving or investing in other income-generating activities do not exist. I shall relate this point later in the thesis to livelihood diversification in the context of pastoralism.
The income approach for the measurement and reduction of poverty has been criticized as
“pretension of the development ideology” (Sachs, 1992: 30). Bøås and McNeill (2003) argue that multilateral organizations have failed to achieve their development objectives
partly because they consider poverty as a technical failure and thus prescribe technical solutions for poverty reduction. A salient feature of the income approach to poverty is its neglect of the dynamic processes that lead to poverty. Poverty is an outcome of a certain dynamic process that can be seen from temporal, spatial and contextual perspectives (Green and Hulme, 2005; Novak, 1996), which the income measure of poverty does not consider. Shanmugaratnam (2004:4) identifies three major shortcomings with the income approach to poverty. Firstly, it ignores the structural circumstances that underlie poverty and glosses over variations among the individuals classified together as falling below a certain poverty line. Secondly, it tends to ignore non-market resource flows, and thirdly, the approach fails to consider variations in cost of living between urban and rural areas.
Its continued dominance may be attributed to the general asymmetrical relationships that exist between the South where poverty is highly prevalent, and the North which is the source of funding for poverty research and poverty reduction. The urban-focused origin of poverty research has had a tremendous influence on contemporary rural poverty conceptions in the countries of the South. While proponents of the income approach to poverty often recognize the multidimensional nature of poverty, they assume that defining poverty narrowly from the income and expenditure perspective will allow
“greater analytical power, both to put national poverty dynamics in a global context and to understand the multidimensionality of the process underlying” poverty (UNCTAD;
2002:6).
Dissatisfaction with the income approach to poverty has spawned efforts to develop a broader understanding of poverty, one which is more inclusive of non-monetary, structural, distributional, and dynamic aspects of deprivation. While these efforts are diverse and sometimes contradictory, they share a rejection of excessive reliance on income, expenditure, or consumption. Baulch (1996:2) presents a range of poverty ideas in the form of a “pyramid of poverty concepts”. This graphic representation puts private consumption on the pinnacle of the pyramid as representing the narrowest conception of poverty. The base of the pyramid reflects the sum of private consumption, common property resources, state provided commodities, assets, dignity and autonomy.
Rein (1970:46) identifies three broad poverty concepts: subsistence, inequality and externality. While subsistence refers to the provision of the minimum basic necessities needed for survival and maintenance of physical efficiency, inequality is concerned with cross-variability of income groups representing various income layers that exist in society. Externality has to do with the consequences of poverty for the rest of society. It stresses the impact of the behavior or actions of the poor on the non-poor, and sees the former as posing threats to the security of wealthy groups. This view has been criticized for reducing “human beings into means” and advancing “the real tragedy” of the poor who already languish in miserable poverty situations (Sen, 1981:9). Rein (1970:61) recognizes the importance of non-economic variables in poverty conception, and argues that a definition of poverty limited to subsistence measures does not promote a complete picture of poverty, because it ignores several important elements that influence subsistence, such as values, preferences and political realities. Poverty is also viewed as having a series of meanings linked through a series of resemblances (Spicker, 1999:151).
Spicker (1999:159) describes up to 11 definitions of poverty, clustered into three major components namely material conditions, economic position and social position, each comprising elements that carry discrete and yet overlapping meanings.
Poverty has also been defined in terms of “relative deprivation” (Townsend, 1971:43). In this sense, poverty is noted as a condition of denial relative to those standards of living that other members of the same society enjoy. An individual, family or groups are said to be “in poverty” when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and enjoy the living conditions and amenities which are customary in the society. Townsend thus rejects low income earning as automatically qualifying as a reliable indicator of poverty. He cites quality of diet, birthday parties for children, summer holidays, and evenings out, as being indicators of the relative status of a household. In addition to determining diet, activities and living conditions from which the poor are excluded, one must consider the nature of resource distribution within the population, in order to understand relative deprivation (Townsend, 1971:42). The argument contains an implicit message that poverty must be seen in terms of local standards. Nevertheless, the “local standard” must be set within a common local context
because a group identified as “poor” by the standard of a particular locality could be considered to be excessively affluent when compared with other community.
A further conception of poverty can be discerned in what Sen (1999) calls “capability deprivation”. The quoted study designates development essentially as freedom from those factors that hinder people from realizing their potential as human beings. Such factors include lack of: political freedom, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency and security. Going beyond the customary focus on income and wealth, the author draws attention to a focus on capabilities, which he defines as “substantive human freedoms”.
He argues that capability deprivation is a better measure of poverty than low income, because it can capture aspects of poverty hidden by income measures. According to the author, income is a narrow conceptualization of poverty; it is just a means to an end and helps to attain the goal of freedom (Sen, 1999:14).
The adoption of the capability approach as an element of livelihood, and by extension, taking capability deprivation as the underlying conception of poverty, has been criticized as confusing the process and outcomes of livelihoods, since “capabilities …both influence and are influenced by personal and household livelihood strategies as they evolve over time” (Ellis, 2000:7). Also, the realization of substantive human freedom appears to be more hypothetical in some contexts than in others. This is because claims of rights and realization of freedom depend largely upon a number of factors, such as the existence of democratic political space, autonomous judiciary systems, respect for human rights, and the level of awareness of the public about their legal and human rights. In the absence of these factors, the attainment of substantive human freedom might be merely an ideal to pursue.
As noted by Anderson and Broch-Due (1999:x): “poverty does not come with a single definition that can be easily detected through standardized indicators and measurement.”
Before examining some of the linkages between conception and cause, I briefly discuss an established dichotomy in the causation of poverty.
2.1.3 Causes of Poverty
Causes of poverty are many and emphases differ across various disciplinary perspectives.
Structural explanations emphasize economic forces operating beyond the control of the household, whereas the cultural/behavioral level refers to a household’s traditional or chosen behavior as being instrumental in generating poverty (Miller, 1996:571). The structural approach is said to be more dynamic, while the cultural/behavioral approach is assumed to be more conservative in terms of self-adjustment to change. In other words, poverty is experienced due to endogenous or exogenous causes. Accordingly, an individual or group can be living in poverty due to a variety of the following reasons.
Firstly, poverty can emanate from some behavioral attributes exhibited by the individual or group, such as “persistent traditions”. This endogenous explanation relates to the so- called “primitive traditionalism” assumption, which supposedly impedes development and change, particularly in the context of third world countries. Warren Prawl (quoted by Mathur, 1989:6) is reported to have characterized rural communities in the third world as
“ultra-conservative individuals, steeped in tradition, hemmed in by custom, lacking in motivation and incentive, captives of age-old methods, and lacking in ability to make decisions”. This proposition is criticized for reducing the essence of third world societies to stagnancy and a lack of change-orientation (Isbister 1993:34). Secondly, the root of the cultural/behavioral explanation of poverty may be traced to the “culture of poverty”
paradigm, which was discussed by Oscar Lewis (Lewis, 1966). The tenet of this argument is that poverty itself breeds a way of life that forms a unique subculture. It depicts the poor as a causative agent of their own poverty since they purportedly continue to misbehave and pursue a recklessly self-indulgent lifestyle, leading to a situation known as the “deficit of culture” which eventually chains the poor to perpetual poverty, generation after generation (Solinger, nd:1).
To expand a bit on the notion of the “culture of poverty”, it refers to those norms and aspirations that are said to be resistant to change, and consisting of those cultural patterns that keep people poor, even when opportunities exist for them to overcome poverty (Gans, 1971:156). Two factors distinguish Gans’ notion of the culture of poverty from that of Lewis. For Lewis, the culture of poverty emerges as a result of the tension
between the forces of change and the forces of endurance. The former tend to advance towards modern materialism and put pressure on the ethic of persistence among oppressed people in poor communities, who cannot withstand the pressure. In such a situation, where real opportunities for adaptation to changing socio-economic conditions are absent, the poor develop the culture of poverty, characterized by disorganized self- gratification, opportunism, cynicism, violence, and frustration (Lasch, 1968). Gans, on the other hand, emphasizes the tendency by the poor to maintain the status quo, even if the opportunity for change exists. For Gans therefore, the culture of poverty applies to
“those people who lack aspiration and who do not know that change is possible”.
Secondly, Gans adds the dimension of the non-poor as contributing to the evolution of the culture of poverty. Accordingly, persisting cultural patterns among the wealthy contribute to the maintenance of the status quo of the poor. Gans’ argument carries an important implication for action: “If one applies the concept of a culture of poverty only to the poor, the onus for change falls too much on the poor, when in reality, the prime obstacles to the elimination of poverty lie in an economic system that is dedicated to the maintenance and increase of wealth among the already affluent” (Gans, 1971:156).
The “culture of poverty” paradigm has been criticized and rejected in favor of exogenous causes, for the former blames poverty on, and places responsibility with, the individual or the group. Townsend (1971:44) writes that “the concept of the culture of poverty concentrates attention upon the familial and local setting of behavior and largely ignores the external and unseen social forces which condition the distribution of different types of resources to the community, family and individual”. The exogenous stance provides extra-cultural/behavioral explanations for the causes of poverty akin to those expressed in views of Townsend just cited. Hence, the causes underlying poverty are rooted in factors that are external to the individual or group behavior, their value systems and norms. The wider economic, political and social structures must be considered. Indeed, Fincher and Wulff (1998) contend that poverty is produced by circumstances, not by individuals.
Sociological approaches unravel the foundation of poverty by emphasizing social relations (Green and Hulme, 2005), cultural contexts and social processes (Berry, 2007).
Grusky and Weeden (2007) use a “class model” to gauge household participation in the
labor market as a benchmark for understanding the social basis of poverty. They argue that the relationship between individuals’ economic background (class) and the nature of their attachment to the labor market reveal poverty better than other indicators do.
Accordingly, “underclass”, “formal-sector poor” and “informal-sector poor” are identified with the corresponding labor market status of “no attachment”, “precarious attachment to low-wage”, and “precarious attachment to self-employment”, respectively (p. 23). The argument takes cognizance of the importance of making a distinction between the rural and urban sectors in applying the model to poverty analysis. Further to the exogenous factors, some explanations consider poverty in terms of a greater emphasis on rights. For example, in his comparative analyses of the causes of famines, Sen (1981) developed the entitlement approach and questioned the validity of the food availability paradigm. He emphasized lack of entitlement – to assets, to the fruits of one’s own labor – not lack of food availability, as causing hunger.
Broader definitions of poverty have done much to highlight aspects of poverty not captured by conventional conceptions. Furthermore, conceptions that incorporate dynamic and distributional aspects of poverty have enriched our understanding of what it means to be poor. Some recent approaches, however, beg the question of when conception ends and cause begins. Implanting aspects such as poor health, human rights, dependency, vulnerability, or any number of others inside the conception of poverty can be seen to be confusing concept and cause, process and outcome, and creating a bloated nomenclature that obscures rather than clarifies. It also runs the risk of producing tautological relationships in the positing of explanations for poverty and in associated prescriptions: if poor health is an important and intrinsic aspect of poverty, then measures to combat poverty must necessarily focus on health improvements. Finally, the gap in operationalizing the many dimensions of poverty lingers as a major methodological challenge in terms of the measurement of poverty (Baulch and Masset, 2003; Thorbecke, 2007).
And yet, the conventional and narrower definitions of poverty as a lack of income or as low expenditure or consumption, also contain inescapable links with causal explanations.
The monetary focus of income and expenditure measures biased explanations and implies
prescriptions towards issues of markets and commercialization. And since quantitative measures of poverty, in an analysis of cause, must necessarily be matched up with a set of quantifiable regressors, non-quantifiable aspects of poverty tend to be excluded (Thorbecke, 2007; Rensburg, 2007). Such aspects may include complex expressions of human relations and politics. Thus a quantitative analysis of poverty often identifies as causes precisely those “intermediate” factors incorporated in broader conceptualizations of poverty, but fails to trace poverty to underlying issues related to economic interests, power, and politics.
These more general problems and issues take on specific guises in the context of the poverty-environment nexus, which is the subject of the following sections.
2.2 Poverty, Environment and Pastoralism 2.2.1 Poverty-Environment Linkages
The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) posits important links between the environment, sustainable development and poverty. The Commission states that “poverty reduces people’s capacity to use resources in a sustainable manner; it intensifies pressure on the environment” (p. 49), thus potentially compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (p. 43). A counter argument rejects the view that holds the poor responsible for environmental degradation, in that it blames the victims (Sachs, 1992). Sachs further views the eradication of poverty as a “pretension of the development ideology”. He explains this ideological move in terms of a conceptual marriage between “environment” and “development”, denoting the politicization of nature by technocrats and governments, which in turn creates “global ecocratic discourse” (Sachs, 1992:30-35).
The position of the poor being responsible for environmental degradation is further challenged by the views that emphasize the dynamic roles the poor play in sustainable natural resource management, citing their active involvement in civil society movements against resource-degrading actions by powerful commercial enterprises (e.g. Broad, 1994). The poverty-environment nexus can be conceived of as being co-existent with limited opportunities for some groups, uneven development processes, and unequal
distribution of rights and power (Angelsen, 1997). The relationship is also described as a complex inter-linkage, where environmental changes due to inappropriate policies become both a symptom and a cause of poverty and underdevelopment (Blaikie, 1985).
2.2.2 Poverty and the Pastoral Context
In the context of pastoralism, poverty is viewed as a lack of animal ownership (e.g. Iliffe 1987: 65). Lack of animals is an obvious and important rural poverty indicator, more so in pastoralism since livestock is the key asset and the primary source of such a livelihood.
However, ownership of animals or lack of them as a single criterion can hardly explain poverty in the pastoral context, since the wider political and economic contexts are crucial in shaping present-day pastoral life (Mohamed Salih, 1985).
Pastoralism as an economic activity derives livelihood mainly from livestock production, which in turn depends on “extensive grazing of native pastures” (Gefu and Gilles, 1990:
100) and “natural pastures” (Salzman, 2004:103). The expressions “native” and “natural”
in terms of pastures imply the type of resource control and range condition, while
“extensive grazing” indicates the mode of resource utilization. Successful pastoral production requires a functional resource base, referring to productive rangelands intact with key resource components (grazing, browsing, water and minerals) and efficient governing institutions to guarantee access on the basis of societal rules and regulations (Bassi, 2002). Climatic variability notwithstanding, the herder communities in arid environments implement common property resource tenure to permit extensive grazing and ensure access to seasonally variable resources, through the mechanism of mobility (McCabe, 1994; 2004; Monod, 1975; Baxter, 1975; Niamir-Fuller, 1999). Despite the variable frequency and extent of mobility depending on environmental conditions, the most common practice is that families and herds are separated into different zones with various seasonal resources, according to the different needs of grazers and browsers. Such mechanisms enable pastoral production in highly unpredictable ecological conditions (Torry, 1973).
Pastoralism continuously faces the impact of external and internal pressures, leading to a decline in the resource base, a breakdown in key production strategies, and livelihood
insecurity (Markakis, 1993; Bonfiglioli, 1992). In earlier times, with the advent of colonialism, private tenure rights emerged in different pastoral regions of Africa, giving rise to different types of land use that directly competed with extensive grazing (Lane, 1994). Consequently, the processes of resource base decline and tenure insecurity were set forth (Galaty, 1999). In the Horn of Africa for instance, the colonial2 land policy continued unchanged in the post-colonial era, further affecting pastoral land uses and exposing pastoralists to starvation (Shazali and Ahmed, 1999). Competing land use types, such as crop cultivation and conservation schemes, often led to fragmented rangeland ecosystems and alienation of the most productive landscape units (such as river valleys), confining the herders to marginal lands (Spencer, 1974). The general trend in many parts of Eastern African rangelands is that the friction between private interests and common property regimes has intensified with the declining resource base, thus fostering conflicts between different types of resource uses over the limited space (Ayele, 1994; Ayalew, 2001;
Mohamed Salih et al., 2001). An observation from a study in Tanzania points out the possibility of implementing crop cultivation and wildlife conservation, without risking pastoral livelihoods (McCabe, 2003).
Poverty within the pastoral context, as with other modes of production, is a multi- dimensional phenomenon that impinges upon the fundamentally interlinked components of pastoral production: natural resources, livestock, institutions and security. It is the interplay of policy, changes in land use, environmental degradation, droughts, decline in the capacity of customary institutions of social networks, and competition between resource regimes that, among other factors, disrupt the interconnectivity of pastoral resource systems. An adequate understanding of poverty can only be achieved when efforts are set within the relevant socio-ecological contexts. Contextualization is instrumental, not only in obtaining the perspectives of local populations on poverty concepts, systems of measurement and indigenous indicators – i.e. understanding poverty
2 Ethiopia had only a brief experience of overseas colonization (limited to the Italian occupation of 1936- 41), but its own history of state formation through conquest and settlement, resulted in the experience of herding communities in terms of livelihood decline being equally appalling (Bassi, 2002). The root cause of pastoral marginalization was entrenched in the relationship with the state, whose policy had always been biased towards crop cultivation (Hogg, 1997).
through the eyes of the local people – it also lays the foundation for sound environmental and development policy formulation, and affects successful implementation (Homewood, 2004). Since pastoralists accumulate wealth in the form of livestock, their poverty conception is built mainly on asset holdings (livestock), and poverty analysis should thus consider processes that affect asset building.3 Stocklessness holds serious ramifications for pastoral households due to the fact that it is economically degrading, and thus affects human relationships among family members (Baxter, 1991). Moreover, the lack of livestock adversely affects the capacity of local institutions, including the implementation of obligatory resource redistribution, voluntary social networks and spiritual well-being.
2.2.3 Pastoralists and Land Tenure
Policies with regard to pastoralism have been tacitly influenced by unfavorable attitudes that were popularly held among the mainstream scientific discourses towards the pastoral mode of production (Krätli, 2001; Farvar, 2003). Earlier, scholars advanced views such as the “cattle complex” (Herskovits, 1926) suggesting that pastoralism is an archaic system, doomed to vanish (Huxley, 1948), or that it induces tragedy in terms of its own common resources (Hardin, 1968). As Adger et al (2001) noted, subsequent views advanced crisis narratives with regard to deforestation and desertification. These dominant views influenced pastoral policies and implied solutions for the “environmental disaster” that herders supposedly cause when maximizing the size of private herds on communally held grazing lands (Lane, 1998). Policy makers tacitly accepted such assumptions and used them to justify policies for tenure reform, land privatization, the registration of title deeds, formal land use planning, and livestock controls (Lane, 1998;
Roe, 1991). Such policies do not provide pastoralists with protection against land alienation (Lane and Moorhead, 1995). They have been detrimental to extensive grazing systems and represent the foundation of the cause of poverty by tacitly de-linking pastoralists from their natural resource base.
3 For a comparison between indigenous indicators and conventional measures, different livelihood sources could be converted into quantitative indicators in order to gauge the appropriateness of the latter in different cultural contexts (see Paper III, this thesis).
The options of replacing mobile pastoralism with non-pastoral activities such as cropping, which were promoted by development programs, have failed to work (Anderson and Broch-Due, 1999; Hogg, 1986). Today, despite decades of continued pastoral research and a supposed improvement in understanding the pastoral rationale in resource management (McCabe, 1994), policy makers and planners tend to maintain a similar policy tradition. If pastoralists are agents of environmental degradation, how are the environmental problems explained in a situation where rich investors cause distress to pastoral production by alienating the best rangelands from traditional users? Large-scale ventures impose a condition whereby pastoralists are forced to intensify land use over a reduced space. As a result of induced overexploitation, pasture becomes depleted, exposing the livestock to feed scarcity and the local producers to an ultimate livelihood crisis. In such circumstances, can environmental degradation be justifiably blamed on the poor? Ellis (2000:119) responds: “…making the poor the scapegoat for environmental deterioration merely lets off the hook the commercial and state behaviors responsible for the really big changes that result in switches in the dynamics of the interaction of people with local environments”.
In Ethiopia, for instance, development interventions in pastoral areas (such as commercial farms and sugar cane plantations in the Middle Awash valley) introduced private schemes in the 1950s that dispossessed the people of the Karrayu and Afar rangelands (Fecadu, 1990; Ali, 1996). The current policy direction seems to introduce a more radical change in pastoral land use, as it envisages sedentarization as a strategy towards long-term pastoral development (Ethiopia MoI, 2001:138-146; The Ethiopian Herald, 2004) and irrigation schemes are foreseen as a key to tackling food insecurity in the pastoral areas of the country. Among other issues, the provision of social services is used to justify the need to change the communal tenure-based, mobile lifestyle to a sedentary lifestyle (Farvar, 2003). This position, dominant in the past and still embraced by some development planners today, has been challenged. Scott (1998) argues that schemes designed to improve the human condition have failed due to state simplification of local realities, as states tend to impose centrally-driven plans and ignore the importance of local customs and practical knowledge.
Thus the fundamental question to be raised is whether the policy of land use change in terms of sedentarization helps to tackle poverty or exacerbates it? Experience from Kenya shows that sedentarization of pastoralists led to the creation of perpetually relief- dependent, destitute communities (Hogg, 1986, Baxter, 1993). Baxter concludes elsewhere (1975:210) that sedentarization leads to pauperization, particularly when forced on pastoralists. It is essential to consider appropriateness in formulating pastoral development policy and program design. It is often the case that measures introduced by planners for development purposes end up generating poverty instead of tackling it.
Anderson and Broch-Due (1999:ix) describe it as follows: “while planners see the reduction of livestock and move towards sedentarization and cultivation as the ways to prosperity, pastoralists tend to see these as the very definition of poverty itself”.
2.2.4 Household Responses to Poverty
Community and household response strategies to the mounting pressures on pastoral resource bases and the decline in food security, assume both positive and negative forms.
At the community level, customary institutions of governance may respond by adopting resolutions that involve internalization of the problem, or countering external threats such as attempts to repossess lands lost due to conflict-induced displacements. Such attempts often encounter violent resistance and generate further conflicts. At the household level, households may embrace diversification or specialization in a particular type of activity in response to risks (drought, raids and diseases). Diversification, whether referring to an investment in non-pastoral sectors or the acquisition of different livestock species, represents a positive response to shocks, with the aim of forestalling or minimizing risks (Little et al., 2001; Ellis, 2000). The choice to diversify in post-drought periods is obviously constrained by the long years it takes for herd recovery, and a lack of financial capacity for investing in non-pastoral sectors (Bollig and Göbel, 1997).
Those families that fail to adopt diversification due to the cumulative impact of shocks drop out of pastoralism through a downward economic mobility, instead of “up-and-out”
(Devereaux, 2006). Such negative stimuli force households to embrace negative response mechanisms, such as beggary, the sale of forest products and marketing one’s labor for cash, practices which were traditionally considered to be socially degrading. The lack of
economic capacity to invest, labor requirements, cultural proscriptions and beliefs may hamper household responses in terms of diversification. Economically, a household lacking surplus stock will have limited opportunities for inter-species conversion, or to invest in non-pastoral activities. For example, members of certain clans in Borana (e.g.
Karrayu Berree and Oditu Iddoo) avoid camel products as a culturally-dictated food taboo, to the extent of abandoning what they have been eating or drinking, the moment the word “camel” is mentioned! The implication of such a strong tradition is obvious in terms of the potential adoption of camel pastoralism.
A recent report from the African Sahel demonstrates how logistical and organizational costs constrain options for mobile households to participate in different livelihood activities (Pedersen and Benjaminsen, 2008). In situations where options to overcome logistical difficulties are absent, dependence on a particular activity may expose a household to more livelihood risks, given the general uncertainty in the pastoral ecology (Scoones, 1995). Wealth status may determine what a household can afford and pursue as a risk aversion strategy, as opposed to alternative forms of survival. Impoverishment may compel a household or its members to migrate and search for opportunities in towns, and to remit some income home (Hjort, 1979; Doti, 2005). It is only in an extreme crisis scenario, such as a catastrophic drought or large-scale raiding, that an entire family may relocate to town in search of relief.
Apart from occasional food-for-work or cash-for-work programs as emergency responses, employment generating activities in the pastoral areas of Eastern Africa are insufficient in providing significant sources of livelihood (see Devereaux, 2006).
Generally, labor markets are under developed, and the few opportunities are concentrated in towns and taken up by those possessing some skills such as basic literacy, which pastoralists overwhelmingly lack (see also Little et al., 2001). To date, research has not given adequate emphasis to show how widespread poverty influences the functionality of indigenous institutions.
2.2.5 Institutions for Poverty Alleviation
The relevance of customary institutions in terms of poverty lies in the role of societal rules and norms in facilitating or constraining individual and group access to income sources, social networks and the exercise of one’s rights in the society. Customary institutions may be viewed as “the rules of the game in a society or… the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction … structure incentives in human exchange” (North, 1990:3). Social relations are interpreted differently, as either playing a fundamental role in supporting the poor (Shawky, 1972), or contributing to long-term poverty through the mechanism of exclusion from the society on social, occupational or territorial criteria (Green and Hulme, 2005; Sindzingre, 2007). The members included within a group not only enjoy the benefit of access to group resources as guaranteed by the rules of inclusion, but the better command of resources also rewards them in negotiating access to external resources.4
The purpose of social institutions is the appreciation by the society that self reliance could be lost at any time and that individuals do not have sufficient capacity to buffer themselves against such losses. Hence, being rich or poor is not necessarily predictable or rational. For example, the Borana pastoral community uses metaphoric expressions such as comparing livestock to cloud cover, in that both are susceptible to sudden disappearance: horiin duumansa (Tache, 1996). Pastoralists respond to such a precarious situation by means of a range of traditional mechanisms such as clan-based mutual assistance, kinship ties and wider social network.
Sharing plays an essential role in survival, particularly in the context of declining food security (Oba, 1994). Institutions of mutual support are common among pastoral communities of Eastern Africa, although their modus operandi differ across communities, depending on the system of social organization of a particular group. For example, the
4 In Borana, the social organization of access to water based on clan membership establishes an automatic structural “exclusion” of non-clan members from the water network. However, the rule of exclusion can be re-negotiated through other social mechanisms (such as inter-clan associations, being and becoming Borana, or marriage alliances). A clan with a stronger status in terms of water control also has a stronger position in the water networks with other clans.
Rendille of northern Kenya implement resource redistribution through age set cycles (Sato, 1997). On the other hand, among the Borana Oromo, cattle redistribution is set within the context of clan organization (Bassi, 1990; Paper IV this thesis). The Borana have both obligatory and voluntary resource redistribution systems. The former follow clan lines, while the latter arise from kinship ties, friendship, co-membership in an age mate group, cohabitation, or other types of networks, such as inter-household networks of women (marroo). In Tanzania, mutual support among the Maasai also follows clan organization (Potkanski, 1999). Social security is also established among various pastoral groups in the form of stock friendships, through which post-drought restocking is channeled (Dahl and Hjort, 1976; Sobania, 1990).
Today, the wider social networks are constrained by the escalation of poverty and conflicts (among former stock friends belonging to different ethnic groups), which limits institutional capacity to support their members, particularly in the face of an increasing population. In contemporary pastoralism in Eastern Africa, it appears that the number of households that require assistance surpasses the number of members of their social organization (clansmen, kinsmen or age mates) that are able to support their respective needy affiliates. If this is the case, it creates an imbalance between the need for institutional support and the provision of an effective supply. It follows that the stress on the institutional level causes erosion of self-pride, hopelessness and loss of direction in life on the part of recipient households. The problem may be further complicated by the likelihood of fatigue that can be caused to those members who are better off, due to frequent resource contributions in attempting to support their needy affiliates. Particularly when the former lose the capacity to support, then the economic, psychological, and social impacts on the stock-poor members of particular social groups, or the non-member poor by extension, become severe. For the better-off members, such an impasse compromises the capacity of socially binding institutional support, while for the poor, it reduces the opportunity of establishing a symbiotic relationship between them (provision of labor services) and the rich (provision of livestock and social sponsorship).
It follows that one needs to ponder the nature of pastoral social institutions vis-à-vis poverty alleviation. Institutional strategies in dealing with the poor in the pastoral regions
of Africa have been described as a contrast between including the poor in exploitative relationships on the one hand, or total exclusion from pastoralism on the other (Iliffe, 1987). The argument, based on the experiences of communities across western, eastern and southern Africa, considered comparative degrees of ecological variability across the sub-regions; levels of social stratification; and the corresponding social inclusion or exclusion of impoverished pastoralists. The groups exhibiting hierarchical social structures (such as the Tuareg and Moors in the Sahel-Sahara belt, and the Tswana in the south), who inhabit highly variable environments, were found to incorporate the poor into their communities through servitude. By contrast, the apparently egalitarian groups (e.g.
the Maasai) are said to exclude the destitute from society, forcing those who drop out of the main economic sector to seek survival in other forms of subsistence outside pastoralism, such as hunting and gathering (foraging). Such a “down- and-out” situation instead of “up-and-out” economic mobility is a growing phenomenon (Devereaux, 2006).
The downward economic mobility is intricately interlinked with downward social mobility, given the lower social positions accorded to foragers. 5
In Eastern Africa, the rich and the poor have often co-existed through a symbiotic relationship such as noted earlier. Economic and cultural imperatives necessitate social networks and compulsory institutions of resource redistribution in support of the poor. The capacity of customary institutions to effectively tackle poverty on a larger scale is limited (Toye, 2007). In Borana for instance, the intention to reinstitute impoverished families into the society is motivated by the need to restore their cultural identities through restocking;
the need to promote wider participation in the development of clan natural infrastructural capacity (mainly water development); and the need for clan participation in the meta- governance institution of the gada (Paper IV). Post-drought restocking programs that aim to improve recipient households’ economic status also contribute to the strengthening of the social networks. Potkanski’s (1999:200) report from the Ngorongoro Maasai in
5 In the present study, household poverty was analyzed across wealth ranks, by focusing on economic stratification and poverty profiles related to gender (Paper III). To further unravel the social foundation of poverty, future endeavors should assess linkages between social stratification and economic differentiation.
Tanzania documents that through the clan systems of mutual assistance, the “poverty- stricken families are enabled to move back toward self-sustaining pastoralism once again”.
This section has considered various approaches to the study of poverty and discussed the salient features of each. The origin of poverty research in the western, urban setting has influenced poverty conceptions and measurements in terms of a bias towards money. The money-biased, income approach to poverty, which stresses income and expenditure as the typical tool for measuring poverty, is re-emphasized by multilateral institutions that are the forerunners in the global combat against poverty. The consumption index model proposed (e.g. Lipton, 1988) as an indicator of poverty status is perhaps appropriate for an urban setting with a monetary economy, but renders little aid in understanding and determining poverty in conventional pastoralism, unless “income” is re-defined to accommodate a range of wealth types, beyond the focus on money. Even with a variety of wealth types incorporated into the income definition, the analysis would remain partial as long as the link between policies, social systems and resources is overlooked.
Thus, as this thesis shows, poverty in the pastoral context is attributable to a number of interrelated factors that directly or indirectly affect pastoral production systems. These factors include a change in resource tenure from collective to exclusive holdings; a reduction in the rangelands; a decline in the economic capacity of mutual support institutions and social networks; conflicts; marginalization and so on. On aggregate, these factors play a fundamental role in causing and maintaining poverty in pastoralism.
Likewise, they provide a framework for a comprehensive analysis to enable us to grasp the complexity of poverty, which a single and isolated approach would not be able to capture adequately.It is essential that an integrated approach should start with the understanding of specific features of pastoral production systems and their social dimensions as the point of departure, in order to understand poverty and to better inform policy decisions.
3. SYNTHESIS
In this section the study area is briefly introduced and the research methods are described.
This is followed by the presentation of a framework that was used to analyze poverty in the context of Borana pastoralism. Finally the key findings of the study are summarized, followed by brief recommendations on future policy direction.
3.1 Study Area
The study was conducted in four Peasant Associations (PAs) in the Yaballo and Dirre districts of the Borana Zone (Fig. 2) of the Oromia Regional State in southern Ethiopia (Fig. 1). In the Yaballo District, the research focused on Dida Hara and Harweyyu PAs, whereas Dubuluq and Harallo were selected from the Dirre District. The area is populated mainly by the Borana Oromo for whom pastoralism provides the major source of livelihood. The Borana pastoralists, numbering about 0.5 million (Ethiopia CSA, 1994), inhabit the lowlands of Borana and the Guji Zones of the Oromia Regional State (Figs. 1
& 2). The society is a patrilineal one, consisting of 18 geographically intermingled clans.
The clans are organized into two intermarrying moieties called Sabbo and Gona, which comprise 3 and 15 clans, respectively. The society is also organized into age grades and generational class systems, in which five generational classes (gogeessa or luba) alternate in assuming power every eight years (gada period) in terms of governance responsibilities (Legesse, 1973). A pan-Borana assembly, called the Gumi Gayo convenes once in every gada period to make or amend customary laws, while the gada institution takes the role of custodianship of the laws.
The Borana region is semi arid, featuring contrasted seasonality with an altitudinal range of 1000m to 1500m above sea level, and a mean annual rainfall measuring below 600mm (see Fig. 1 in Paper II). There are four locally defined seasons comprising two rainy seasons (long rains − ganna,and short rains − hagayya) and two dry seasons (long dry season − bona hagayya and the short dry season − adoolessa). In normal years, the long rains are received between March and May, and the short rains between September and October. During the two rainy seasons, the onset and cessation of the rains are often irregular, but the ganna rains are more reliable than the hagayya rains in their amount,
temporal and spatial coverage. The former rains account for 60% of the total annual rainfall, while the latter rains contribute only 30% (Sutter, 1995). The remaining 10% is expected from the occasional rains (furmaata), which provide sporadic relief by punctuating the progress of the dry season stress and making inter-seasonal transition easier for human and livestock populations.
The impact of the failure of rain differs among the three rainfall regimes and directly corresponds with the degrees of their reliability. The absence of the furmaata rains is negligible when the amount and distribution of the preceding and subsequent regular rains are normal. The failure of the hagayya rains creates heightened stresses in the following long dry season, yet with good planning, the impacts can be minimized. If the pasture from the preceding long rains is adequate, the chance of the livestock surviving failure in the short rains is generally higher than in the situation when the longrains fail. The failure of the longrains results in a phenomenon known as oolaa, meaning the absence of rainfall or drought, that often causes severe shortages in terms of animal feeds, water and human diets, and subsequently leads to increased hardship and livestock mortality.
3.2 Methods
The study is based on both qualitative and quantitative data. Methods of data collection include participant observation, a household survey, key informant interviews, case studies, and discussions during an organized workshop in Yaballo, the administrative capital of the Borana Zone. Detailed descriptions of methods are given in the individual studies. A brief overview of each method is provided below (except case studies as they were auxiliary in illustrating the major observation).
3.2.1 Participant Observation
Participant observation is a common data collection method in the ethnographic research tradition, where a researcher immerses himself or herself in the study setting. The researcher interacts intensively with the people in the study area over a long period of time, in order to gain understanding of their behaviors and actions (Sillitoe et al., 2005;
Bryman, 2001). The extended interaction reduces the researcher’s “strangeness” and presumably helps him or her to establish a good rapport with the people among whom he